Prestigious Medical Journal Asks Americans Not To Reelect Trump

The Lancet medical journal is criticizing Trump and his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic

It’s no secret that the U.S. has faced plenty of criticism over its response to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite having weeks of warning from all over the world, the Trump White House failed to take the threat seriously, promised testing capacity that it couldn’t deliver, encouraged state governors to bid and compete against one another for scarce, lifesaving medical supplies — the list could go on. Now, a prestigious medical journal has published an op-ed further criticizing the administration’s virus response.

The Lancet medical journal posted an op-ed calling Trump’s coronavirus response “inconsistent and incoherent,” and stating that a presidential candidate should “understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.”

“The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear,” the article reads. “But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency.”

The article continued, “The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC’s capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge.”

The article concludes, “The Trump administration’s further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.”

An unsigned editorial calling for such drastic action as voting out a president is uncommon for medical journals, the Washington Post reported.

“It’s not common for a journal to do that ⁠ — but the scientific community is getting increasingly concerned with the dangerous politicization of science during this pandemic crisis,” Benjamin Corb, the public affairs director for the nonprofit American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, told the Post. “We watch as political leaders tout unproven medical advice, and public health and science experts are vilified as partisans — all while people continue to get sick and die.”